Legendary American standup Lenny Bruce became a legend not because he was flat-out funny. Listening to his recorded material today–from his famous “Lone Ranger” routine to his various tours through the ethnic hothouses of the urban landscape–reveals a rather glaring lack of imagination, especially when you compare what has survived…
When people refer to playwright Alan Ayckbourn as “the British Neil Simon,” the comparison is usually intended to be a compliment. Both men are god-awful rich (with Simon probably in the lead, but only because of the countless American movie versions of his plays); both, at their best, have stitched…
There are two plays that alternate in New Theatre Company’s crisp, occasionally volatile production of Donald Margulies’ Sight Unseen. One is the portrait of an aborted relationship, the other a savage, expressionistic landscape of the terrain between art and identity, commercial success and exploitation. You have to wonder if Margulies…
“How they gonna keep him down on the farm once he’s seen Paree?” was roughly the question in some friend’s minds when I told them I was going to cram as much theatergoing as I could afford into my eight-day Manhattan vacation. After I arrived–during various conversations in which I…
Watching Dallas Theater Center’s gutsy (and I mean that literally, but more later) production of Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, I couldn’t help but wonder why American playwrights haven’t plundered the 19th-century American frontier for the kind of blood-red gems Ondaatje has uncovered. As directed with…
If, while in the grocery checkout or ATM line, you find yourself standing next to a young man or woman with a shockingly inappropriate platinum dye job, there are two possible explanations–either the person shares Dennis Rodman’s hairdresser, or he or she is a cast member of Kitchen Dog Theater’s…
Some wag once said that if you want to keep your appetite for sausage and politics, you should never watch either one being made. To that warning I add the process of making art. Since I consider writing, music, and the visual arts to be infinitely superior experiences to a…
The highest recommendation I can give Theatre Three’s Texas premiere of British playwright David Hare’s theological drama Racing Demon is that I emerged punch-drunk from the production. The jabs weren’t aimed at the audience, but if you have more than a passing interest in the internal politics of the contemporary…
There were a couple of reasons why I entered Teatro Dallas’ 1997 Day of the Dead show, Lamia, with high expectations. First, knowing that Teatro’s autumn celebrations of the Latin American holiday El Dia De Los Muertos–a more historically rooted version of the North American Halloween–manage to scare up more…
In a recent interview with The Dallas Morning News, Todd Waite, one of the two actors who play eight different characters in Alan Ayckbourn’s bleak two-part comedy Intimate Exchanges, was quoted as saying: “It’s impossible to act the same in a different wig.” Waite has appeal and confidence, as does…
Not knowing a lick of French beyond a few pretentious little Continental phrases such as joie de vivre, I have no idea if Moliere’s original script of his sex farce Amphitryon is rote and lethargic, or if celebrated poet Richard Wilbur’s translation is the problem. Having read (though never seen…
Having seen two performances of My Head Was a Sledgehammer, the debut by Our Endeavors Productions of Richard Foreman’s scattered stream-of-consciousness script, I’m sure of only two things: This show is fast-paced and pleasurable, and it means absolutely nothing. You might disagree on either or both counts. That’s the beauty…
It’s tempting (and just a little bit cheap) to read all kinds of incestuous undertones in Paula Vogel’s poignant, occasionally acidic, three-actor comedy, The Baltimore Waltz, not the least because Vogel’s newest Off-Broadway hit, How I Learned to Drive, has offended some in the New York theater community. That emotionally…
In critical circles, Harold Pinter has the reputation of being “an actor’s playwright,” mostly because he acted for a number of years in 1950s London under the pseudonym David Baron. His scripts go so far as to instruct the actors where and how long they should pause between dialogue. A…
Ask 34-year-old playwright Neil LaBute how he came to see his controversial debut feature In the Company of Men hit the big screen, and he’ll tell you he doesn’t quite know. “I became a filmmaker by accident, by proxy,” LaBute says during the Dallas stop on a 15-city international tour…
Ion was written some 500 years before the birth of Christ by a man who, infrequently honored with literary awards during his lifetime, wrote and lived alone in a cave. (Like all juicy tidbits about classical writers, this last item may be apocryphal, originally invented in the interest of characterizing…
There’s a famous maxim, ofttimes attributed to Mel Brooks, that tragedy is when I slip on a banana peel; comedy is when you slip on it. We can polish this little gem about human nature to a harder, more specifically theatrical gleam by adding: “But when we both slip on…
There are two kinds of despair in literature–mature and immature. Immature despair is a cry for attention disguised as a suicide attempt–it’s easily dismissed, even satirized, because the author cannot contain his or her narcissism for long. What might begin eloquently as a lament for the fragile human condition eventually…
Since there’s no theater district in this town, the intrepid Dallas stagehound must sometimes endure a symphony of city noises–auto traffic, low-flying planes, construction equipment, etc.–to get a fix. But based on my recent experience at Theater Too, the small but surprisingly effective basement space of Theatre Three in the…
I’ve long ago gotten over people’s surprised (and sometimes disdainful) reaction when I argue at parties and dinner conversations that Dallas maintains a fertile theater scene despite neglect from the city at large. I’ve come to understand that there are two kinds of people who ignore plays in this city–those…
When I was 12 years old, I went to my first rock concert–at Reunion Arena. My sister and I bought tickets for seats against the back wall of the first balcony–undoubtedly one of the worst deals you can get at Dallas’ almost-dormant downtown arena. Yet the assault of funny-smelling smoke;…
“I know how the story goes,” says Angus (Michael A. Corolla), a perpetually hopeful if not always realistic Englishman who spent his childhood watching adventures on the movie screen. “They tell each other deep secrets, and the power relationships begin to change.” Angus is talking to three co-workers with whom…
